 Thank you ODC organizers for putting this together. Great to see a lot of interested folks here and a few friends who we have interacted with the last few years. So it gives me pleasure to talk about a very contemporary act that's happening now. My name is Shreerar Pappashti and I'm the CEO of the Center for Public Policy I&M Bangalore. Today I'm wearing a different hat that's of the Open Governance India portal which we have been trying to get started in the last few weeks with friends here. So first let's begin with why open data, why particular kind of open data and I think it's about the needs for better governance and I think all of us think that we can do something about it. And just going back to a famous definition that we give you here which says what is open source governance? It says let's take the philosophy of open source, open content and democratic principles and see can we make it better? Can we make the governance better? Can each one of us play our role better? And also in terms of creation of policy being as similar to a document and legislation being democratically open to people. So at this point of time I would like to just begin with something to be at the back of our mind and it's a need for humility. Something said a few decades ago which said Mr. Mehrap to leech as of all our will-gills is daily's pun but there exists no loom to leave it in their fabric. So as some of the speakers were trying to say earlier let's try and evolve the loom rather than say that this is the loom. Okay so as long as we keep that in our mind maybe we'll have a good success. And the reality of governance today you know I mean we have seen the various choir in Egypt we've also seen a similar movement in the USA which talks about spreading democracy and even there itself there is a very massive movement which says the 99% will not be silent and there's also very interesting another picture which I couldn't put for the short of space which said I am the 99% and I don't have a lobbyist will you listen to me. I think we need to look at a different kind of governance today. In India we haven't been far behind we had our own spring and in one of the way a particular person chronicled this movement he said the nation finds to end corruption. And a lot of people came together a lot of brainstorming happened and two very interesting ideas came out. One was the need for Jell-Lock-Pal-Bille the second is the citizens charter and maybe citizens charter hasn't got as much media coverage as the Jell-Lock-Pal-Bille because Jell-Lock-Pal-Bille is an easy prescription to think that somebody will come and change the world. Let's look at citizens charter and even before that let's go back and see what are we doing in our own country in terms of engaging with people, various stakeholders. There was joint bill drafting companies where Anazariya and some legal luminaries from the government to part draft their bill. The government has been talking to various think tanks which there are some of them in the room today. There are people's collective in cases which started as a people's movement. Today I find this place in the National Advisory Board. National is a committee, Anaroy speaks on various issues. Some also get legislated. The NREGA is a very good example. And the learning in all these experiments have been that you need to be patient, you need to be engaged and there is a possibility of long lasting outcome. And there was also a political change in Karnataka and the current chief minister said, development is a mantra of our government. He says that I pledged to consolidate the achievements made so far and which achievements he was suffering to. But nevertheless, he also on a positive note said that to give a new dimension to administration and provide more impedance to development. The budget which happened a couple of days ago talks about the scheme should reach the beneficiaries in time. So this is chapter being de-affirmed here. And the achieve development, centric and transparent administration with no scope for it. Good statements, but is it being forwarded in policy? Yes, the Canada Guarantee of Services Decisions Act, which was passed by the legislature at the end of last year, came into force from March 1st. The pilot phase where 151 services from 11 different departments is now available in a time-bound manner. And it's being implemented in four talukas. As many of you know, there are four other divisions in Karnataka. One in each has been selected along with BBMP. The Central Taxes Department, which you will see a little later is very important in a different way, has come in voluntarily and has started implementing across the state. And April 2nd it will be applicable to the whole state of Karnataka. What did we do at the Central Public Policy Act? We worked with different governments, trying to help them solve different challenges. And when this act was being formed about eight weeks ago, they came to, as I said, can work on this and can we meet this better? So we said, okay, fine, let's get started. So they asked us to join concentrations with four leading departments who were part of KGSE. And it was a very interesting conversation. There were Lord Birocracy, and some senior bureaucrats in the room. The discussions, the first five minutes, were about the provisions of the act. The rest of the session was about saying, who will get blamed for not delivering those services? And I think we should be very, very aware of the fact, as we were talking in the morning, telling, well, sometimes the bureaucrats will not be empowered enough to really make the change. So why put the gun on his head? So there were a lot of discussions that at last some kind of a mechanism was involved. And then they said, okay, let's look at a continuous process. Rather than just saying it as a single switch that will make the Lord Birocracy work. We then sent about 12 recommendations, which I wrote after the four consultations, and sent it to the government, the Prince Constable. And what happened was surprising. In two minutes, I saw that it was reply to all with a whole bunch of lies who were working with her to implement the act. And she said we should act on each one of them. I was like, okay, I thought he'd go into the dustbin. Should I even write for half an hour my recommendations? And that was interesting. And that gave me a lot of hope and said, maybe somebody's listening. Maybe somebody has a reason to listen. And often in our engagement with the government we need to try and understand what is his reason to listen to us. And people may want to listen, municipal may want to act. And in this case, she was going to act on certain parts of it. And we said, let's go with it. Then a request came out of the other. They said, what is the public perception of this? How do we engage with the public? How do we get a view of the public? There was a consultative window, but as usual, very few responses were coming to the consultative window. So we said, okay, let's try and reach out to the media. So one evening at 6.30, the call comes and says tomorrow time come to an All India Radio talk show that happens at 12.30. I was like, okay. I mean, everybody's tomorrow is planned. It's not unplanned, but we reshuffle it and we were able to be there. And very interesting one-hour conversation where many people logged in, they spoke, they said what they would like to see the act. And they started the point. There is a specific provision of the act, but the lay citizens get back to the government and say that, well, I'll not look through the act. I'll want to talk about pretty other different things. So there is whenever you should be aware of that noise that happens. The government comes with a specific proposal, but the people are willing to talk about separate things. Somewhere you will have to take the signal from that interaction and feed it back into the act. Because even this principle secretary will not be able to make changes to the other services which are not in the act. So that's the reality. We should kind of smoothen that process. And there was a contest. The logo, the slogan, the title, everything was from the public. Then there came a point where they said, okay, how do we monitor? How do we put this, put IT system in and how do we monitor? Again, there were a lot of back and forth in this report. That report, who will see it, who will not see it? And some way we were able to influence and say, you know, why restrict it? Let everybody see it. And somewhere in IC also was happy to do it. And we weren't wondering why. They were still figuring out their role-based security and all of it. So they said, okay, opening it all is an easy thing for us. So you can make some small wins like this when you are in a consultative process with the government. And that, I think, for all of us in the room is a good opportunity to be able to see data as it happens and to see the progress as it happens. Then we realized that just the department needed a couple of people to help them in interfacing with IC and other vendors. So we brought in two people. Again there. Yeah. We mentioned people discuss, people come back with feedback about something else but the topic, I mean, the act is about something else. So have you seen any interest in organizing documents like those in a more semantic fashion where you would maybe pick a point and then discuss the point in lengthy detail? I mean, technology is very easy around that topic. We could try that. We have the logs from SMS's that we got and those SMS logs came in. After the fact, but what if the discussion could be brought to the document itself as a document then becomes part of a conversation where you could pick a point and say, okay, I'm going to discuss in ten comments this one point? It's a little difficult and I think what happens is the government runs at a very fast pace. We should understand that. They open it up for two weeks, it's a very repetitive process and then for anybody to be able to pass it and drive meaning into something that seems irrelevant to the particular act in question and drive it back in is a little bit difficult. And at least luckily, some of us actually have been talking about opening the policy, making itself too public and that's the reason why we saw, okay, fine, it makes sense for us to push and make the reports being public a lot more valuable than that. And that's also a consultative process output where somebody in the system felt we can make it open and it was made open. I understand but that fast response mechanism is what we need to build as open data community here as to saying, okay, can we build a consultative platform? I'll put the act, can I crowdsource consultative solutions to it? Somebody has to do this for the government. The government will not do it. The government will only say, okay, we can do it with KGSE, let me throw it out. So I think that's a bandwidth issue there. And somewhere when the process, when fortunately some doors open, we will have to capitalize on that and that's where we could all get together and do it. And then here's the status, one lakh requests in just four taluks and of course the commercial taxes department as you can see is a king here with 8,000 requests there out of one lakh. Straight up across 11 departments. Then here is something that we are working with the government and I would like to hear from you guys either here or offline about what else could go into this thing. So take a look at the act and then see what else we could do. So we said, okay, as you could see in the previous report, right, they just gave us some five reports and then, you know, I can't build through it. I can't make sense out of it. You give me some numbers. You're throwing some numbers to me but then I don't know the health of the system, right? The first thing at least I want to have visibility is the health of the system and how can I know the health of the system? I can't know from this. So I said, okay, give me raw data and they said, what do you mean by raw data? So then I said, okay, let me dub myself. I gave them a simple report request which you'll see at the end of the presentation containing only about seven or eight columns. I said, it's not there though. Parki, I'll try and figure out how to mix it. Next is what you saw was not machine readable. I mean, at least luckily it's neatly formatted HTML somewhere you can pick it up but you need to spend time to parse it out. The next is some, in the consultation it's very important to attend these consultative discussions with the departments. So there was this disability certificate that was supposed to be given by the health department. And then they said, but actually in one case the women and child development department was also involved. So there was this back and forth of saying that you will not have meetings in the right time I will not be able to deliver it by this time and all that stuff. So the government in its own, in the last few years has made the delivery of services very complex. It's involved NGOs somewhere and said, okay, you do this part. NGOs don't carry laptops and go to the field. The laptops and computers are in the office. So you can't plug in IT solutions for this. So there are all those complexities. So we should try and allow as much complexity as possible. So that's good. Then the next thing that we said is let's look at a chisening system. Let's try and find out whenever a default happens, which means the default here is defined as somebody not getting a service administrative number of days. If he has a reason to reject it, he has to clearly specify the reason to reject it. It can't just say he and I didn't like the face of the guy or the guy didn't give me 500 bucks and hence I'm not passing it. Glad to say, okay, he did not give me the birth certificate of that guy and hence I can't process ahead. So there should be valid justification. Let's talk about, I mean, in this 151 services there are some very interesting services like water connection in 7 days. We all know water connection in 7 days was not something that any one of us in the room have got it. How will the government deliver it just because this act has been passed? So we'll have to be a little more sensitive to make the changes slow but gradual and sure process. Next, then we said, okay, look at preventive and corrective actions. Let's look at systematic simplification. Then the next thing that we said was will you stop at 151? For whatever reason you chose to do 151, which is great. Then Bihar, which is the other success story here in the citizen's chapter, has 151 services and we are doing three times as much. So that's good but then what happens after? So they said we are open to do as many more services in new course of time. So that again falls into the public domain where can we put pressure and make that 151 whatever number in new course of time. Then we said we need to bring in various stakeholders for regular consultations, not just in Bangalore but in Bihar, Kulbarga and wherever we see a lot of defaults. These are symptoms of something not being right. Can we make this little more participatory? And the government is now saying yes, I think we can and hopefully that should happen in the next few days. Then again, we said open data and I think we said we should at least be able to put it at some place if we don't get machine data performance on the grant of services act. And they seem to be open to that. So we just have to sort it out and see when I can get the report that I'm asking for. And at this point of time while we were juggling this and we thought can we do a significant move towards open governance and how can we do it? And there was another reason with this at Center for Public Policy we have been working on various policy issues at a very large scale. We collected some data ourselves, we collected some data from NSSO and other places. And we said every time we do some dumb steps again and again just because the source data is in a locked format. And I'm sure Sumandra will be able to talk more about NSSO data. If you have to work with NSSO data it's trouble and every time for every research you don't have to do the same thing. So we said can we do some open source stuff there. Then next thing was why just open it up at CPP can you open it up outside? But then technology also needs a lot of investment of time effort. And at that point of time we went with other companies also working on the data issues for DOMA. So they also came and they said ok let's try starting something small and let's agile iterate and then see where we go with this process. And in less than 2-3 weeks is what you see the open governance in the approach. And currently what we have done is we've pre-populated the data from 3 different data sources. And one of them is the minister of statistics and implementation which I think is still headed by the prime minister. And we also noted it's moded to something. And one is PI. Yeah it still runs. Then of course there is a preliminary KGSE data that we have been able to upload. And we are also working on trying to make sense of NSSO data over the next few weeks. We might upload some stuff into it. Again you know NSSO data is rich with time series data. It's just that we have to apply our mind to read the time series well. I was reading a report by Ravishri Vastava from NCE US about migraine data and I think somebody was mentioning migraine data in the morning today. It's very complex. There are data sets where you get contradictory results. So you need to be interested in that much of time to get some sense out of it especially on migration. So here are a couple of data that we have put on Open Governance India.org. It's in alpha stage so please feel free to get on to it and see if any of these data sets are of your use. What's your order? Open Governance India.org It's in the previous slide. Yeah it's also in the previous slide. Open Governance India.org Yeah When I do represent an academic institution it's like can we partner with any of the academic institutions to be able to write some of the signature data to get there as well? Yeah, so the Center for Public Policy is located in high and bad load. So we have that much amount of existing data but at the same time we want to make this we are open for partnership. Anyone who want to come in put a set of complementary data as we are very the idea is we are trying to solve our own problem. A couple of months ago I was trying I was teaching at National Institute of Design on data visualization and it was so tough to get 25 data sets for India which you could represent on the map. And that's the state of ability to take and engage with government data today. So I think we thought for that particular problem point and if that's a problem point it's problem point not just for CPP but for everybody else. And that's the reason it's an open platform. Yeah I work with an NGO who is constantly doing surveys for BWSSP and I want to hear your base management a lot of ways because there's a lot of data with us but we haven't thought of uploading it in certain subjects. Okay It depends we will have to initiate that conversation but at the same time what I think that you guys should start doing at your own level is of saying what form of this data that I have is shareable in the open class. It doesn't matter right so English is a technology problem so that will be solved by other teams but what's important is like NSS is not publicly shareable but aggregates of NSSO data are shareable right so our first project is of aggregating data out of NSSO and making it reusable in a certain way. So start looking at this you know I mean BTO, GI, BIT there are hundreds of platforms out there which are a platform try to make it aggregate and shareable and the by default inclination for us is to be you know the kind of licensing where we where attribution is a must but you are free to reuse the data republish the data and all okay just let me just quickly finish couple of slides and then I'll come back yeah so that's about it so four datasets of KGSE that's over there and then again you know I mean this platform gives you some out of the box visualizations that you could do and these are couple of them so Bellary and Bangalore is just very easy to do we have parameterized get built very new the moment you create one particular column as a dimension you can then say drop-down, Bangalore, Bellary everything becomes out of the box so even that will get that will evolve with time and we can make it better then this is something the regular xl5 chart that I pulled out from the latest data that was last week's data this week's data and if you see 8000 requests are from the commercial services department which is running statewide operations and then I just put it out and then saw the rest of the data then you see that the urban development department I think it's a transport department which has about 11000 requests and about 80% of them have already been sold which means the government does a lot of work so we need to see where it's not working the right way or whom it's working for and whom it's not working and this we will know only with little more what do you call it inquiry and here is the simple excel sheet that I shared with them this is trying to ask them simple things so every request now with these 151 services will come with a 15 digit unique number okay so what I want to do with each unique number is saying what was the service requested out of the 151 next is which location did you request it then the third is who was the particular officer I thought I will get a lot of flag for this what the hell why then do we need to know which officer it is okay then the next is status the date requested on date you are and date of completion and if it's in the open state of course there's no date of completion and if rejected what's the reason so that's pretty much that I thought the first level of data that I should put in the topic to make some comment on that how is it going how is it not and these are some viewer's and at this point of time I am open to questions one I really like the fact that you are working with the government and not just blaming the government which is very exemplary second of all if you are still open to suggestions about the grievance there's more of a curiosity what is the grievance in the act how if the government doesn't provide within seven to ten days what are the provisions within the act which the government actually approach the government and say that this has not been provided and secondly we said about 25 data sets we have a lot of data sets clean data sets on our website so please go ahead and download them and work with them and show us the data sets that we are talking about what is called accountability initiative there are wonderful data from the state of schools and education across India and so I think we should start pulling that in I will tell you later how do we get it to 15 number digit it's not as you know I mean the NIC recommended that it is a 15 number digit and I somewhere read that there is some discussion on number digit I don't know what the cause is but I mean that's the only thing and again you know as I said there is only so much that I can chew when we are writing this way I mean one of the things was the grievance it was something let me come to that so one of the things that bothered me in the first four consultative meetings when I sat there it said provision says that the citizen has to then go back and fill in a specified format for getting compensation with another officer and it seemed dumb to me you know you are putting a system that can track the statuses you know that it's defaulted why don't you automatically raise the chala do the rest of the process I mean why do you need to go back again and fill another form and claim benefits for grievances and but at that point of time it was too much to just open that front end battle with the government so I said I understand let's talk about 151 and see how best we can do with it and luckily in the last 2-3 weeks when the government has been talking about you know they have actually been saying that let's automatically issue chala to the airing officer and then let's take it from there so that's about it and please feel free to get in touch with us and we'll be happy to hear from you and that's yeah I'll just take the question but we can do the transition my brief introduction some of the issues that I found was skill levels some of us who have the skills I mean how can we actually bridge the skill gap and actually facilitate this generation of numbers I completely understand so what we realize is that the government was being taken for a ride by very intelligible NIC consultants who said the problem is with you the problem is with this format etc so we actually brought in 2 very experienced guys from the continent to drive this one guy is from oracle very senior guy and he has very strong inclination to do this so he brought him into a very open employment process he was selected to be a very smart guy and he is now working with the government doing a phase better with them so that's one thing the second trend is of saying that so if you have bandwidth please come and borrow it here and we can make KGSC better and the same with the other request of how vegetation institutions can partner we are very open to make this open I mean this door was not open only to Shreeta Babishati this door was open to a citizen let's make that very powerful I think that's what we everybody in this room can do thank you